Posted
by
samzenpuson Sunday September 05, 2010 @01:26PM
from the golden-dial-up dept.

destinyland writes "In the Central African Republic, broadband internet service costs 3891% of the average monthly income. 'Put another way, a month's broadband service costs more than three years' average wages in the country,' notes one technology blog, 'compared with less than two hours' earnings in Macau.' A United Nations' technology group released the figures in a new report in advance of a September 19 summit on the digital divide in developing countries. ('We are trying to avoid a broadband divide,' said Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the secretary general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union.) Their agency noted that the rate for broadband penetration is below 1% in many poor countries, with monthly costs higher than the average monthly income. 'By contrast,' notes the BBC, 'in the world's most developed economies, around 30% of people have access to broadband at a cost of less than 1% of their income.' And the report also estimates that there are 5 billion cellphones in the world — though some people may own more than one."

It's not offtopic. It was a joke about counting dead people towards the total population, since their number of 5 billion cell phones indicates they're counting the dead cell phone in my closet that's never going to be used again.

I have been to many african countries and the only way the are able to communicate with work, family and friends is through mobile phone. There is no infrastructure for wired communications and the postal service is almost non existant or cost a furtune (also there is a lack of places where you can pick up the mail). You can be in the middle of nowhere and you find a mobile phone mast and people with mobile phones. Many of them do in fact have several phones, one on each major provider, as the providers not always peer with each other or the peering is defunc. Mobile serivce is cheap as long as you call people on same carrier, thus another reason for more than one phone.

Though the carrier issue is also quite often (probably more often) dealt with by carrying more than one simcard & one phone... Then there are dualsim handsets.

Those mobile phones (and mostly so called "feature phones") are also increasingly a way of accessing the web [opera.com] (conveniently, last three reports are about Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America) - IIRC already close to 30% of Facebook usage is from mobiles. After looking at State of the Mobile Web reports from Opera (which include most popular sit

It might be. Cell phones are a great example of how developing world can use technology to leapfrog certain stages of development that they missed out on. Countries without functioning telecommunications infrastructure can (contract foreign companies to) slap a bunch of cell phone masts around the major population centers and combined with cheap handsets practically overnight you got 80% of your population connected. Of course there is a bit more to it, but it's a lot easier than wiring up the country.

The problem is that wiring up 80% of the country would create a thriving local economy and enable inexpensive communication while bring in a foreign company to throw up a few masts just exports more of what little wealth exists. That's why, in spite of the opportunity to leapfrog whole generations of tech, much of Africa remains undeveloped.

It certainly helped US create a thriving economy and raise the standard of living. One thing all of the developed world has in common is that they didn't just hire someone else to come in and build them, they were built from the inside so that the wealth stayed in the local economy and they developed expertise in their society.

One thing the less developed countries have in common is they keep having experts suggest they export their wealth to corporations in the developed world and end up with a few bits of

At the end of 2007, the world had 3.2 billion mobile subscribers (that's the metric used here, active numbers - it's damn easy to determine); at the end of 2009 - 4.6 billion. It's quite plausible there would be 5 by now.

Also, while indeed some people have more than one number / some places more than 100% penetration - in many developing ones a group of poeple (say, a family) shares one mobile phone. That's an explicitly stated reason why Nokia puts, into their lowest end (on S30 - 1202, 1280, 1616, etc.) m

I work in ICT development and advocacy in the Pacific, and write about it occasionally. I can think of several countries off the top of my head where teledensity [google.com] has risen by orders of magnitude within 12-18 months of new mobile services being rolled out.

In Vanuatu, where I live, we went from about 20,000 active accounts to 100,000 within 9 months. Unimpressed? The entire population of the country is 235,000.

I predict that there will come a time when the idea of 73% coverage of all of humanity doesn't raise eyebrows the way it does now. I predict that this will happen within 5-10 years.

Within 5-10 years 80+% should be easily achievable. 70+% shouldn't raise eyebrows already; available data suggest this number of subscribers is just a simple fact of life. Curious how people have a hard time accepting it.

"And the report also estimates that there are 5 billion cellphones in the world — though some people may own more than one."

Does this take into consideration that people upgrade their phones? If I upgrade my phone every year, does this mean, that according to whoever did that study, that I am the proud owner of six cellphones?

Just because that many cellphones exists does not mean that all of those devices are in use. I can't tell you how many old cellphones I have in a box somewhere.

The UN report talks about the number of people, individual subscribers. The number of mobile phones in use.

With the number of mobile phones sold annually, all of them could be replaced after 4 years; and people often do use them longer - especially since owning your phone & prepaid are a standard pracrise in many developing places.

That just means you and your sister are not a very typical mobile phone subscribers. For example - I'm guessing you have a contract / majority of people in your place have one?

Well, thats quite rare in places with largest growth dynamics. People use prepaid; they own their phones and use them much longer. It's not a "this month's tech" - it's a utlity / often the first & only easy way of communication.

And the UN report explicitly says about 5 billion individual subscribers, as in active accounts, not m

It's going to be pretty difficult to proliferate anything through much of Africa with ultracorrupt asshats running many of the countries, not to mention other ultracorrupt asshats trying to overthrow the current ultracorrupt asshats in power. You'd think that they'd stop caring about goddamned broadband and start worrying about actually getting a stable infrastructure first. Yes, I realize that the guys talking about broadband are part of a subgroup within a much broader one, but still, focus on what you can actually accomplish, not something that's going to take a lot more work in other areas to become even remotely feasible.

Then again, Nigeria seems to be doing just fine with internet access...

My experience is that Africa is concerned with looking modern more than actually being modern.

The average rural African citizen hears from the politicians that cell phones and internet are the indications of modern life, so they support the "ultracorrupt asshats" who promise to bring them such things. They manage to live their lives without decent infrastructure already, so why bother building more?

Clean water? There's a stream nearby that only has six ducks defecating next to it. That's good enough.

A sewage system? There's a nice ditch that's cleaned by floods at least once a year. That's good enough.

Televisions? Yes! America has them, and Barack Obama is going to buy one for every American! We need them, too!

As awful as it sounds, I think this will eventually lead to a fully modern infrastructure, but it'll be different from the Western norm. In Ghana, one of the largest employers is the telephone company, who builds cell towers in the middle of nowhere connected via satellite. That means a push for service roads, stable electricity, and a network of independent distributors of pay-as-you-go credits. It's certainly not fast, but the trickle-down economy is working a little.

(While volunteering in Ghana, I was actually told "You are American? You have Obama! He will buy a TV for all Americans!")

A more reasonable interpretation of "I won't have to worry about..." is that that's a figure of speech and not literal. The idea seems to be that Obama would increase people's standards of living by fixing the economy, rampant corporate greed, overpriced health care, etc. that contribute to keeping the poor poor.
(She's probably a little too optimistic though, considering her statements in retrospect and two years into the Obama administration.)

What's going to reduce corruption and produce stable infrastructure? Democracy, an interested populace, and prosperity through economic growth. All things that getting broadband out there is going to help with.

Sure, you could try and bring them up by going through the exact same development path we did - but that's going to leave those nations permanently x years behind. The best way to bring a society forward rapidly is investment in science and technology, and there's no sense going for anything but the b

Consider that Europeans and Asians had nobody to hold their hand when they developed technological and infrastructure improvements. Perhaps Africa is substantially lacking because they do not have the abstract thought needed for these improvements? I recall an effort in the DCR to protect some gorillas. The reserve officers relied on repeater radios, which were promptly looted for whatever was in the shacks. Bring broadband to the area? Prepare to replace lines constantly.

And none of the above are likely to happen in many African countries. You have iron-fisted dictators, endless tribal warfare, guerilla groups galore, rampant superstitions, and a whole lot more. Hell, even in South Africa, one of the more developed nations, it's still believed by many, many people that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS...resulting in the rape of young girls, even infants. Broadband isn't going to help with that. Rapid investment in science and technology? Do you know ANYTHING about Af

Hell, even in South Africa, one of the more developed nations, it's still believed by many, many people that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS...resulting in the rape of young girls, even infants. Broadband isn't going to help with that.

Actually it might, by making accurate information more readily available.

How are you going to implement science and technology in an area that's been ravaged by warfare for years? How are you going to set this up when warlords and dictators just love to seize it for

I don't think it's at all fair to compare prices based on average monthly income in a country. If the average income is mere dollars per day or per month, how can you possibly expect internet access to be within means? It's like complaining that the average New Yorker/Manhattanite can't afford a car because the parking costs almost as much as their rent!

I don't understand what you mean. Comparing cell phone prices to average income in a country tells you something about effective availability of cell phone communciation in that country. I don't think it's meaningful to say that it's "unfair" to do so. Who is it being unfair to?

Well, without getting into too much detail it depends on whether broadband is a tradable or non-tradable good. A tradable good is something like say gold - worth pretty much the same all over the world, because otherwise there'd be arbitrage. A non-tradable good would be something like getting a haircut, which is why most can afford to get haircuts despite living on mere dollars a day. The wages are much lower so the prices are much lower.

A lot of it is equipment, but a lot of it is also people to lay down cables, wire houses, set up wireless antennas, do support, maintenance, configuration, billing and so on. If you didn't take into consideration local costs, you'd reach a lot of crazy conclusions. And regarding the things they do have to buy, it's profit-maximizing to sell cheaper in poor countries than in rich countries as long as it doesn't hurt the other sales. That is why for example you can find a cheap Chinese or Thai-only phone, because it's only usable in that country and won't hurt your US and other English-speaking sales. I'm sure you could make some sort of deal or to purchase obsolete equipment from a western ISP for cheap.

All in all, I think it's better to compare to monthly income because they could probably sell it for considerably less and still break even. A far bigger issue I think is penetration, the cost of building out a network is not linear to the number of people on it. Even if only 20% of a town wants broadband you have to wire almost as much as if 80% would want it. That is why you often se rates in third world countries that are much, much higher than what I get even on an absolute scale, despite that everything should be cheaper to do down there.

At least here in Norway it's about $40 for basic broadband (1-2 Mbit), $60 (1% of average full time income) for medium broadband (5-10 Mbit) while about $80 will get you a top line (20-30 Mbit). Almost everyone who wants it has broadband, which really keeps the costs per customer down. Sure it could probably get even cheaper but compared to many poorer countries we pay little and get a lot. Things like broadband thrive on volume of many people signing up.

Prices in a given place, in relation to the average monthtly income, is all that matters to the poeple in the end...

But even if you want to look at absolute numbers - apparently the average monthly income is in the range of tens of USD. You certainly wouldn't buy broadband at close to 40x of that amount, too. "High tech" stuff, of various kind, is typically most expensive at such places by all conceivable measures..

Monthly income isn't the issue that people think it is. It's just a number, the question though is what does it get you and what do you do with it? While generally in parts of the world where incomes are low like that there are the other problems as well, it's hardly a hard link. For example with a tax rate of about half when municipal taxes and national taxes are taken into account, Sweden looks a lot worse with respect to income figures than it really is. Mostly because a lot of the things that we in the

Given that the monthly income is roughly $50, I doubt a lack of broadband is what keeps them up at night.

Thank you. You've got people saying things like "We've got to get broadband to the third world so they can catch up!". Broadband? Many of these people don't even have clean water supplies, or a house that isn't made of trash or mud. Just how much is a freakin' broadband connection going to help them?

If you go to the very bottom of the list, yes. If you look at the full executive summary (PDF) [itu.int], the top 115 countries are doing quite ok with fixed broadband being up to 21% of average monthly income. The last of those are countries like Philippines, Vietnam and Morocco. Of the remaining 45, most are dirt poor mostly having a GDP below $1000/person and the bottom 15 countries have an average of $440/person. Also some of those at the bottom are in addition to being poor also island states, the domestic prices are much lower than an Internet connection requiring sea cable or satellite.. And the situation is improving, the title of chart 4 is "Fixed broadband Internet prices are dropping sharply but remain unaffordable in many developing countries".

What I got out of the summary is that you can get broadband at somewhat affordable prices in relatively many countries compared to what I thought. Also that being a poor country in a relatively less poor area helps for broadband prices. Most of the countries that really suck for broadband are those south of Sahara, apparently there's no short way to hook up to a rich country's backbone nearby, while those in Central America and SE Asia mostly manage to hook up to a decent country. You can call it a digital divide here, but it seems to have a physical form very much like a desert...

Thank you. You've got people saying things like "We've got to get broadband to the third world so they can catch up!". Broadband? Many of these people don't even have clean water supplies, or a house that isn't made of trash or mud. Just how much is a freakin' broadband connection going to help them?

Yeah, there's hurricanes in them southern parts. Every year! Why they bother building houses I'll never know.

And illness, too. So why build schools? They're all gonna die anyway!

Come to think of it, why even expect them to read or count? What's the point? They're POOR, I tell you, POOR! When you're poor, there's no point in asking for anything except food and a pine box.

There are many things more accessible in the developed world than the developing world. Oh, such as food, clean water, medicine, clothing, shelter, literacy-level education.

Yes, broadband is nice, and (in developed) countries plays a role at improving human rights (through emporewment of individual citizens to read and share information, both through official channels and outside them).

But in the poorest countries, things are different. Massively accessible broadband would not improve jack squat until people can actually read and write, until they are not dying of hunger and disease. Any investing in broadband infrastructure would be a money hole which would only benefits the pockets of those in power (who undoubtedly will take a graft in exchange for permission of setting up the infrastructure).

But in the poorest countries, things are different. Massively accessible broadband would not improve jack squat until people can actually read and write, until they are not dying of hunger and disease.

I wonder... perhaps their governments could create some videos, in the native language, to teach skills? This would not require the population to be able to read and write. (Getting to the site with the instructional videos, though, might require a bit of effort... Like perhaps creating an XO-like device,

Countries with devastating poverty have a lot of people who can't afford broadband internet for the computer they can't afford to own that runs on electricity they don't have in the "house" that we wouldn't consider a house.

Perhaps we should start with something more basic, like access to clean water, absence of marauding militias, a level of education somewhere above shockingly bad, etc.

Well, with low-bandwidth Internet, maybe villages can tell each other which of the local wells currently have water and what the marauding militias have been up to. People can learn from Wikipedia. Why should poor countries be forced to master technologies in the order that they was invented?

It might have been an interesting study if they had focused on "tier 1" nations -- those with a developed infrastructure, economies, etc.

Going beyond tier 1 nations would be interesting if they focused on some kind of currency-adjusted cost; it might start to look like the Economist's Big Mac index.

More interesting yet would be adjusting for population density -- knowing the Japanese can get 100 Meg up/down for $10/month is kind of meaningless as a comparison when you take into account that the population d

But in Sweden, most municipal broadband in apartment buildings is run directly from an ethernet router/rj45 jack in the wall. 100/100 costs 30$/month - and the population density here is very low. Outside cities it's DSL or cable, of course, but the cities have quite a low population density (or at least it looks that way, there's not much upwards building when land is cheap.) The reason the US has such a poor backbone is obviously because of monopoly stagnation; if the network was state funded and treated

Roads, water & sewer are state owned, but electricity is mostly private although many rural areas are served by co-ops which are nominally non-profit (or minimally capitalist, depending on how you look at it).

I'm not so sure that the US has a "poor backbone" -- obviously there is a lot of bandwidth if you want to pay for it. Even at the consumer level, I think it's gotten better fairly quickly.

I moved into my house in 1999, and there was *no* broadband. In 2000, I finally got DSL -- 768k/768k for $80

But in any super poor country, pretty much everything costing more than $10 in the U.S. is going to be some 100x or 1000x multiple of the median local income.

More than that, when it comes to imports / technology / et al., its price will also be a result of multiplying at least few times those $10, even before getting into buying power of median local income.

In countries without devastating poverty, but still so called "developing", high technology is also typically quite expensive... (and that often includes "more expensive in absolute price" - in a given extreme example of Central African Republic, broadband appears to cost significantly more than 1000 USD per month; would you get it with such prices in the place you live?)

Perhaps we should start with something more basic, like access to clean water, absence of marauding militias, a level of education somewhere above shockingly bad, etc.

...and perhaps we shouldn't. Just because western infrastructure developed in a certain order does not mean that the developing world should follow the same approach.

I, like many others, believe that delivering Internet access to the masses will be what finally enables the citizens of [poor country] to provide food, water, shelter, education, and a stable government for/to themselves.

"Greetings Friend. I represent the estate of the recently deceased Minister of Telecommunications and Internet Services of the Central African Republic. I am writing to request your assistance with a matter involving tansference of a substantial sum of moneys... "

Perhaps the developed world should consider that when you can't feed yourself or your family, broadband is not really that high a priority. If you also factor in the illiteracy rate, it becomes even less of a priority. The things these countries need are much more basic and critical to survival. Clean safe water, renewable, self sustained sources of food. To hell with broadband, and I run an ISP.

Back in olden times when literacy was very low, we had in western nations town criers who would stand on the corner and spread the news for people to listen. Sort of like modern day TV news or radio. Which with income as low as it is in most of those places would probably be more cost effective while the other problems are being fixed. Once you've got access to clean water, food, education and have the basic economy functioning, then the information component becomes both useful and essential.

Imagine, you may not move and there are no jobs. If I offer you a cellphone for half price ("only" several month's income), how much better off are you? Now, consider how much better off you will be if I offer you a job that pays you in a hard currency at 1st world minimum wage.

Sadly, you won't get that job offer. The best you;ll get is just a tiny bit better than the wages a local job offers but for much longer hours. I figure you're just d

Though to be fair: if a given place is developing, impoverished, et al. - it is, in a way, somewhat more likely to have renewable, self sustained sources of food (how they are often not enough is another issue)

In fact, your place is quite likely far from that ideal - agricultures of developed world rely to tremendous degree on hectares taken from the past (via energy stored in fossil fuels) and borrowed from the future (via spoiling the natural balance of surroundings)

Perhaps the developed world should consider that when you can't feed yourself or your family, broadband is not really that high a priority

My god, the ignorance around here is astounding. (That's an observation, not an insult.)

When you're struggling to get by, the one thing you want more than anything else is that your children don't have to struggle the way you did. Parents will go hungry in order to educate their children. I know; I see them do it all the time.

"Hell, I think there's probably more detrimental things having to do with broadband access.You lose your culture -- it is replaced by youtube and pictures of cats with captions.You lose your intelligence and imagination -- it is replaced by farmville, mafia wars, and 4chan.Hell, you even lose your literacy."

Saying "3891% of the average monthly income" without giving an actual price is ignorant and deceptive. It is completely meaningless to measure things this way when income in parts of the world can still be measured in pennies a day. It could very well be (and I suspect it is but don't have meaningful data to determine this) that the broadband cost there is actually less than what I pay. While I do think that it is important that the information on the Internet be available to everyone, and realize that this

It's the only meaningful measure. For example, if we all made a million dollars a day, we wouldn't mind much if a decent meal cost $1000/person. OTOH, we would mind very much if a decent meal cost $0.05/person but we only made $0.01/day.

Yes, what they can afford would not be anywhere near enough for providers working at 1st world rates, but if you consider that those 3rd world wages are also coming from 1st world employers you start to see just how bad a deal they get.

Including a small extra fee for access the municipal fiber network, for 1 month of 100/100Mbit with no caps or meters what so ever, I pay roughly 1.5 hours of my wage after taxes.. and I'm just above average for "low income".. I pay almost twice that for unmetered mobile 3G traffic on my phone though.. tethered to the laptop the gigs tend to run away so unmetered is the only way.;)

As far as I've seen from the latest Akamai state of the internet reports, Scandinavia is losing ground to South Korea and som